How to live: Peterson’s self-help book, 12 Rules for Life, is offered as ‘an antidote to chaos’. Photograph: Phil Fisk for the Observer

Last Monday I read about an intriguing interview with Jordan B Peterson on the Guardian website. Given that I have recently stated that spiritually oriented psychologists are almost as rare as the Phoenix, I may have to eat my words. Peterson may say some things I don’t quite agree with, but more often that not what he says about giving life meaning resonates strongly with me. I think I will have to buy his book. I can hear my shelves groaning with the weight of that thought. [I have now bought the book and my views are expressed in a short sequence starting in March.] Below is a short extract: for the full post see link.

It is uncomfortable to be told to get in touch with your inner psychopath, that life is a catastrophe and that the aim of living is not to be happy. This is hardly the staple of most self-help books. And yet, superficially at least, a self-help book containing these messages is what the Canadian psychologist Jordan B Peterson has written.

His book 12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos is an ambitious, some would say hubristic, attempt to explain how an individual should live their life, ethically rather than in the service of self. It is informed by the Bible, Nietzsche, Freud, Jung and Dostoevsky – again, uncommon sources for the genre. . .

Peterson’s worldview is complex, although 12 Rules makes a heroic attempt to simplify it into digestible material. It might be encapsulated thus: “Life is tragic. You are tiny and flawed and ignorant and weak and everything else is huge, complex and overwhelming. Once, we had Christianity as a bulwark against that terrifying reality. But God died. Since then the defence has either been ideology – most notably Marxism or fascism – or nihilism. These lead, and have led in the 20th century, to catastrophe.

“‘Happiness’ is a pointless goal. Don’t compare yourself with other people, compare yourself with who you were yesterday. No one gets away with anything, ever, so take responsibility for your own life. You conjure your own world, not only metaphorically but also literally and neurologically. These lessons are what the great stories and myths have been telling us since civilisation began.”

. . . “It’s all very well to think the meaning of life is happiness, but what happens when you’re unhappy? Happiness is a great side effect. When it comes, accept it gratefully. But it’s fleeting and unpredictable. It’s not something to aim at – because it’s not an aim. And if happiness is the purpose of life, what happens when you’re unhappy? Then you’re a failure. And perhaps a suicidal failure. Happiness is like cotton candy. It’s just not going to do the job.”

But how do we build meaning? By putting it before expediency. Which is quite close to simply “acting right”. Peterson believes that everyone is born with an instinct for ethics and meaning. It is also a matter of responsibility – you need to have the courage to voluntarily shoulder the great burden of being in order to move towards that meaning. This is what the biblical stories tell us. The great world stories have a moral purpose – they teach us how to pursue meaning over narrow self-interest. Whether it’s Pinocchio, The Lion King,Harry Potter or the Bible, they are all saying the same thing – take the highest path, pick up the heaviest rock and you will have the hope of being psychologically reborn despite the inevitable suffering that life brings.

My parody of materialist thought last Thursday gives me a good excuse to republish this series on Medina’s book. This is the last of three posts: the first came out on Friday, the second yesterday.

Readers of this blog will be well aware that I’m on a bit of a crusade on behalf of consciousness as a spiritual entity. I left Medina last time just as he moved into that territory in his attack on materialistic scientism. The mind-brain data we have throws up a tough problem for dogmatic proponents of reductionism, though.

The Brain as a Filter

Most of us come to think that if you damage the brain you damage the mind because all the evidence we hear about points that way. We are not generally presented with any other model or any of the evidence that might call conventional wisdom into question, at least not by the elder statesmen of the scientific community.

To name just one example, however, there is a wealth of data generated by near-death experiences, some of it now prospective and therefore more compelling (I have republished some of thesedata in the last two weeks). This strongly suggests that consciousness is to some degree independent of the brain and can function lucidly when the brain is completely out of operation. I have covered other areas of research that lead to a similar conclusion and will also be republishing that in the coming weeks.

So, there are other models that do not reduce the mind simply to brain activity (page 73):

The first step towards translating the mind-body problem into an empirical problem, therefore, is to recognise that there is more than one way to interpret mind-brain correlation. A few individuals have suggested that the brain may not produce consciousness, as the vast majority of 19th and 20th century scientists assumed; the brain may instead filter, or shape, consciousness. In that case consciousness maybe only partly dependent on the brain, and it might therefore conceivably survive the death of the body.

Scientism, which denies all possibility of non-material explanations of mind, is wilfully blind and therefore not really science at all as it deliberately turns its back on evidence that calls its materialistic assumption into question without ever examining it in detail if at all. We will be returning to some of the costs of these blind spots in later posts especially in the area of education.

A False Dichotomy

Many now believe that scientism has set up a false dichotomy between spirituality and science.

Rupert Sheldrake is a scientist who has risked his credibility and his career arguing publicly for science to accept its limitations and allow for the existence of baffling mysteries it cannot (yet?) explain.

He lists unhelpful dogmas that the church of science teaches (pages 7-8):

Here are the ten core beliefs that most scientists take for granted.

1. Everything is essentially mechanical. Dogs, for example, are complex mechanisms, rather than living organisms with goals of their own. Even people are machines, ‘lumbering robots’, in Richard Dawkins’s vivid phrase, with brains that are like genetically programmed computers.

2. All matter is unconscious. It has no inner life or subjectivity or point of view. Even human consciousness is an illusion produced by the material activities of brains.

3. The total amount of matter and energy is always the same (with the exception of the Big Bang, when all the matter and energy of the universe suddenly appeared).

4. The laws of nature are fixed. They are the same today as they were at the beginning, and they will stay the same for ever.

5. Nature is purposeless, and evolution has no goal or direction.

6. All biological inheritance is material, carried in the genetic material, DNA, and in other material structures.

7. Minds are inside heads and are nothing but the activities of brains. When you look at a tree, the image of the tree you are seeing is not ‘out there’, where it seems to be, but inside your brain.

8. Memories are stored as material traces in brains and are wiped out at death.

9. Unexplained phenomena like telepathy are illusory.

10. Mechanistic medicine is the only kind that really works.

Alvin Plantinga

Another powerful expression of this anti-scientism view, which I have explored in depth on this blog, is to be found in Alvin Plantinga’s compelling analysis of the problem in Where the Conflict Really Lies (to be republished again later this week). He opens with an obvious truth which most of us may well have overlooked and whose implications he is keen to unpack (page 266):

Modern Western empirical science originated and flourished in the bosom of Christian theism and originated nowhere else. . . . it was Christian Europe that fostered, promoted, and nourished modern science. . . . This is no accident: there is deep concord between science and theistic belief.

He springs on us an unexpected point in favour of his case (pages 268-269):

God created both us and our world in such a way that there is a certain fit or match between the world and our cognitive faculties. . . . . For science to be successful . . . there must be a match between our cognitive faculties and the world.

The apparent chasm between science and religion which unnecessarily widened into an abyss has wrought havoc in our society.

In summary for Medina (page 226) ‘Unbalanced materialism has ultimately resulted in a loss of reverence for life and has diminished our appreciation for the supreme values of life such as compassion, justice, unity, joyfulness, love, service, generosity, patience, moderation, humility – all of which lead to personal wholeness and add an essential richness, beauty, and purpose to life.’

Economic Materialism

Medina goes on to explore the links between the Cartesian-Newtonian worldview and our economic system (page 227):

Locke’s ideas eventually led to the establishment of Western economic values such as free markets, property rights, individualism, and self interest as the primary force that motivates the actions of individuals, and the idea that prices are determined objectively by supply and demand. According to Locke, the right to private property represents the fruits of one’s labours. Furthermore, he emphasises the idea that the purpose of government is to protect individual private property.

He digs fairly deeply into the mire of this materialist mythology (page 228):

[Locke] argued that individual human development is entirely dependent upon the physical environment (an idea known as environmental determinism).

. . . The concepts of John Locke, as well as other Enlightenment ideas such as the concept of laissez-faire, helped to fuel the growth of capitalism. Laissez-faire refers to the belief that government should not interfere with economic affairs beyond the minimum necessary for the maintenance of security and private property rights.

In the light of the massive damage we have wreaked on ourselves and the environment in its name, it is stunning to read what the first advocates of laissez-faire capitalism thought about its beauty and value. It is even more amazing of course to know that many people alive today would probably still agree with them, but then that’s the power of myth after all (page 229):

[Adam Smith] perpetuated the Lockean and Physiocratic concepts of individualism and laissez-faire by arguing that individuals who are free (i.e., without government interference) to seek their own self interest and to compete for their own wealth will ultimately be guided, as by an ‘invisible hand,’ to enrich the whole society. . . . . According to Smith’s framework, the primary goal of society is the production of material wealth, not the advancement of emotional, psychological, moral, or spiritual health.

Medina does not suggest that this view remained the unconstrained consensus (page 230):

In retrospect, considering all the defects of laissez-faire capitalism, it can be argued that had it not been for the eventual “interference” of government reforms, laissez-faire capitalism would have doomed, to this day, the European and American masses to industrial slavery.

He does not put forward socialism as his preferred alternative either (ibid):

. . . it is important to note that the alternative economic system of socialism is also fundamentally flawed. . . Both systems place undue importance on economics as the core of civilisation. . . . From a spiritual perspective, in spite of all their surface differences, capitalism and socialism, when applied in actual practice, have both been destructive to human beings, communities, and the environment.

And goes on to state (page 233):

It is ironic that Marxist revolutionary Communists set themselves up as the primary mortal enemies of laissez-faire capitalism because, in actuality, Marxist Communism is and laissez-faire capitalism and are both extreme manifestations of the same Cartesian-Newtonian worldview.

We are by no means out of the wood yet, in spite of all that we should have learnt (page 236):

Some people assume that the worst abuses of the system are behind us; however, as will be shown in detail later, laissez-faire is once again gaining ground in the United States and on the world scene due to the advent of global capitalism.

According to Medina, the Cartesian-Newtonian worldview has pulled of an astonishing sleight of mind (page 237):

In their efforts to give economics an air of scientific rigour, economists have consistently claimed that their theories and models are a ‘value free.’ . . . In fact, economists are actually tacitly accepting and promoting certain values over others. Such values are evident in the implicit or explicit promotion of competition, material acquisition, unlimited economic growth and expansion, insatiable desires, self-interest, and individualism.

Many of the items at the beginning of the list are seen by many as unquestionably either positive or the unavoidable price we pay for benefiting from an effective system, one that will remain indefinitely the best available. At the same time as these value judgements are hidden from sight, and the workings of the system are presented as simply pragmatic and objective, accusations are levelled at those with a more spiritual orientation that we are attempting to force our values on others, values with no basis whatsoever in reality. There is a heavily disguised pot calling the kettle black here.

Not everyone agrees that spiritual and moral values should be so militantly excluded from the workings of the economic system (page 238):

. . . . Herman Daly, a World Bank economist, and John Cobb, a Protestant theologian, . . affirm that the exclusion of religious and spiritual values from ‘economic science’ has had a devastating impact on people, communities, and the environment. They state, ‘Adam Smith himself emphasised in his Theory of Moral Sentiments that the market [freemarket capitalism] is a system so dangerous that it presupposes the moral force of shared community values as its necessary restraining context.’

Pollution in Shanghai

Toxic Consequences

Our impact on the world is in many ways quite toxic (page 241):

There is now an overwhelming body of evidence that shows that Western-style economic development has led to highly destructive outcomes in Third World countries.

Benta Adera, for instance, a twelve-year-old Kenyan girl, spends ten hours every day picking coffee beans under the relentless scorching sun. As a result of the hazardous pesticides that are used on the plants, she experiences constant pain.

. . . . Many of the foreign foods and products that Americans buy may have been harvested or produced through the use of child labour. Accountability is difficult because the several components that make up a product may change hands several times before they reach their final form and destination.

Even well-liked global brands such as Apple have been caught out in this way and have come in for recent criticism because of the hardships their Third World workers undergo.

Where politics and economics meet Medina quotes evidence to suggest that there are disturbing forces at work (page 248):

. . . democracy itself is threatened by the extreme power of multinational corporations that manipulate governments with legal and illegal methods.

They are of course wealthier than many states, and the record of the tobacco industry and the drug companies does not instil much confidence in me that this evil will easily be remedied.

Medina does not find a great deal of hope in our political system to rescue us from the perils of such abuses (pages 301-02):

Cornell West, Harvard professor and author of the book RaceMatters, emphasises that it is necessary to go beyond the narrow confines of the liberal-versus-conservative debate regarding issues of race and class. He asserts that liberals, on the one hand, generally focus their attention on reforming economic and political structures but do not like to talk about individual morality, responsibility, individual spiritual transformation, and traditional religious or spiritual values. On the other hand, conservatives like to focus on individual morality and responsibility (the Protestant ethic) but generally avoid tackling the issues of business morality and ethics, corporate responsibility, and socio-economic justice and equality.

. . . It may seem as if liberals and conservatives have totally different views, but in actuality, from a holistic perspective, their views are simply opposite sides of the same Cartesian-Newtonian coin.

Those who look to mainstream religion for redemption may be in for a bit of a shock (page 391):

The most obvious result of the materialistic paradigm is the rampant consumerism that pervades Western culture.

. . . . Disturbing evidence shows that consumerism has made strong inroads even among spiritual and religious people. In fact, [when] compared to the general population, Americans who report to have a strong spiritual or religious faith show almost no difference in their adherence to crass materialism – they expend their money, time, personal energy, and other resources in much the same ways as all other Americans.

It is clear that Medina feels we will have to look elsewhere for a solution and this blog contains a wealth of information on those possibilities. As I said at the very beginning of this sequence I will not be unpacking all that in detail now (see below for some good starting points).

When I return once more to a consideration of his work, I will look first at the price our children are paying for our attachment to this bankrupt creed. It is perhaps worth sharing well in advance of the posts themselves a diagram which attempts to show one way in which we create a vicious circle by our attachment to and credulous belief in reductionist materialism and the benefits of competitive capitalism.

Readers of this blog will be well aware that I’m on a bit of a crusade on behalf of consciousness as a spiritual entity. I left Medina last time just as he moved into that territory in his attack on materialistic scientism. The mind-brain data we have throws up a tough problem for dogmatic proponents of reductionism, though.

The Brain as a Filter

Most of us come to think that if you damage the brain you damage the mind because all the evidence we hear about points that way. We are not generally presented with any other model or any of the evidence that might call conventional wisdom into question, at least not by the elder statesmen of the scientific community.

To name just one example, however, there is a wealth of data generated by near-death experiences, some of it now prospective and therefore more compelling (I have republished some of thesedata in the last two weeks). This strongly suggests that consciousness is to some degree independent of the brain and can function lucidly when the brain is completely out of operation. I have covered other areas of research that lead to a similar conclusion and will also be republishing that in the coming weeks.

So, there are other models that do not reduce the mind simply to brain activity (page 73):

The first step towards translating the mind-body problem into an empirical problem, therefore, is to recognise that there is more than one way to interpret mind-brain correlation. A few individuals have suggested that the brain may not produce consciousness, as the vast majority of 19th and 20th century scientists assumed; the brain may instead filter, or shape, consciousness. In that case consciousness maybe only partly dependent on the brain, and it might therefore conceivably survive the death of the body.

Scientism, which denies all possibility of non-material explanations of mind, is wilfully blind and therefore not really science at all as it deliberately turns its back on evidence that calls its materialistic assumption into question without ever examining it in detail if at all. We will be returning to some of the costs of these blind spots in later posts especially in the area of education.

A False Dichotomy

Many now believe that scientism has set up a false dichotomy between spirituality and science.

Rupert Sheldrake is a scientist who has risked his credibility and his career arguing publicly for science to accept its limitations and allow for the existence of baffling mysteries it cannot (yet?) explain.

He lists unhelpful dogmas that the church of science teaches (pages 7-8):

Here are the ten core beliefs that most scientists take for granted.

1. Everything is essentially mechanical. Dogs, for example, are complex mechanisms, rather than living organisms with goals of their own. Even people are machines, ‘lumbering robots’, in Richard Dawkins’s vivid phrase, with brains that are like genetically programmed computers.

2. All matter is unconscious. It has no inner life or subjectivity or point of view. Even human consciousness is an illusion produced by the material activities of brains.

3. The total amount of matter and energy is always the same (with the exception of the Big Bang, when all the matter and energy of the universe suddenly appeared).

4. The laws of nature are fixed. They are the same today as they were at the beginning, and they will stay the same for ever.

5. Nature is purposeless, and evolution has no goal or direction.

6. All biological inheritance is material, carried in the genetic material, DNA, and in other material structures.

7. Minds are inside heads and are nothing but the activities of brains. When you look at a tree, the image of the tree you are seeing is not ‘out there’, where it seems to be, but inside your brain.

8. Memories are stored as material traces in brains and are wiped out at death.

9. Unexplained phenomena like telepathy are illusory.

10. Mechanistic medicine is the only kind that really works.

Alvin Plantinga

Another powerful expression of this anti-scientism view, which I have explored in depth on this blog, is to be found in Alvin Plantinga’s compelling analysis of the problem in Where the Conflict Really Lies (to be republished again later this week). He opens with an obvious truth which most of us may well have overlooked and whose implications he is keen to unpack (page 266):

Modern Western empirical science originated and flourished in the bosom of Christian theism and originated nowhere else. . . . it was Christian Europe that fostered, promoted, and nourished modern science. . . . This is no accident: there is deep concord between science and theistic belief.

He springs on us an unexpected point in favour of his case (pages 268-269):

God created both us and our world in such a way that there is a certain fit or match between the world and our cognitive faculties. . . . . For science to be successful . . . there must be a match between our cognitive faculties and the world.

The apparent chasm between science and religion which unnecessarily widened into an abyss has wrought havoc in our society.

In summary for Medina (page 226) ‘Unbalanced materialism has ultimately resulted in a loss of reverence for life and has diminished our appreciation for the supreme values of life such as compassion, justice, unity, joyfulness, love, service, generosity, patience, moderation, humility – all of which lead to personal wholeness and add an essential richness, beauty, and purpose to life.’

Economic Materialism

Medina goes on to explore the links between the Cartesian-Newtonian worldview and our economic system (page 227):

Locke’s ideas eventually led to the establishment of Western economic values such as free markets, property rights, individualism, and self interest as the primary force that motivates the actions of individuals, and the idea that prices are determined objectively by supply and demand. According to Locke, the right to private property represents the fruits of one’s labours. Furthermore, he emphasises the idea that the purpose of government is to protect individual private property.

He digs fairly deeply into the mire of this materialist mythology (page 228):

[Locke] argued that individual human development is entirely dependent upon the physical environment (an idea known as environmental determinism).

. . . The concepts of John Locke, as well as other Enlightenment ideas such as the concept of laissez-faire, helped to fuel the growth of capitalism. Laissez-faire refers to the belief that government should not interfere with economic affairs beyond the minimum necessary for the maintenance of security and private property rights.

In the light of the massive damage we have wreaked on ourselves and the environment in its name, it is stunning to read what the first advocates of laissez-faire capitalism thought about its beauty and value. It is even more amazing of course to know that many people alive today would probably still agree with them, but then that’s the power of myth after all (page 229):

[Adam Smith] perpetuated the Lockean and Physiocratic concepts of individualism and laissez-faire by arguing that individuals who are free (i.e., without government interference) to seek their own self interest and to compete for their own wealth will ultimately be guided, as by an ‘invisible hand,’ to enrich the whole society. . . . . According to Smith’s framework, the primary goal of society is the production of material wealth, not the advancement of emotional, psychological, moral, or spiritual health.

Medina does not suggest that this view remained the unconstrained consensus (page 230):

In retrospect, considering all the defects of laissez-faire capitalism, it can be argued that had it not been for the eventual “interference” of government reforms, laissez-faire capitalism would have doomed, to this day, the European and American masses to industrial slavery.

He does not put forward socialism as his preferred alternative either (ibid):

. . . it is important to note that the alternative economic system of socialism is also fundamentally flawed. . . Both systems place undue importance on economics as the core of civilisation. . . . From a spiritual perspective, in spite of all their surface differences, capitalism and socialism, when applied in actual practice, have both been destructive to human beings, communities, and the environment.

And goes on to state (page 233):

It is ironic that Marxist revolutionary Communists set themselves up as the primary mortal enemies of laissez-faire capitalism because, in actuality, Marxist Communism is and laissez-faire capitalism and are both extreme manifestations of the same Cartesian-Newtonian worldview.

We are by no means out of the wood yet, in spite of all that we should have learnt (page 236):

Some people assume that the worst abuses of the system are behind us; however, as will be shown in detail later, laissez-faire is once again gaining ground in the United States and on the world scene due to the advent of global capitalism.

According to Medina, the Cartesian-Newtonian worldview has pulled of an astonishing sleight of mind (page 237):

In their efforts to give economics an air of scientific rigour, economists have consistently claimed that their theories and models are a ‘value free.’ . . . In fact, economists are actually tacitly accepting and promoting certain values over others. Such values are evident in the implicit or explicit promotion of competition, material acquisition, unlimited economic growth and expansion, insatiable desires, self-interest, and individualism.

Many of the items at the beginning of the list are seen by many as unquestionably either positive or the unavoidable price we pay for benefiting from an effective system, one that will remain indefinitely the best available. At the same time as these value judgements are hidden from sight, and the workings of the system are presented as simply pragmatic and objective, accusations are levelled at those with a more spiritual orientation that we are attempting to force our values on others, values with no basis whatsoever in reality. There is a heavily disguised pot calling the kettle black here.

Not everyone agrees that spiritual and moral values should be so militantly excluded from the workings of the economic system (page 238):

. . . . Herman Daly, a World Bank economist, and John Cobb, a Protestant theologian, . . affirm that the exclusion of religious and spiritual values from ‘economic science’ has had a devastating impact on people, communities, and the environment. They state, ‘Adam Smith himself emphasised in his Theory of Moral Sentiments that the market [freemarket capitalism] is a system so dangerous that it presupposes the moral force of shared community values as its necessary restraining context.’

Pollution in Shanghai

Toxic Consequences

Our impact on the world is in many ways quite toxic (page 241):

There is now an overwhelming body of evidence that shows that Western-style economic development has led to highly destructive outcomes in Third World countries.

Benta Adera, for instance, a twelve-year-old Kenyan girl, spends ten hours every day picking coffee beans under the relentless scorching sun. As a result of the hazardous pesticides that are used on the plants, she experiences constant pain.

. . . . Many of the foreign foods and products that Americans buy may have been harvested or produced through the use of child labour. Accountability is difficult because the several components that make up a product may change hands several times before they reach their final form and destination.

Even well-liked global brands such as Apple have been caught out in this way and have come in for recent criticism because of the hardships their Third World workers undergo.

Where politics and economics meet Medina quotes evidence to suggest that there are disturbing forces at work (page 248):

. . . democracy itself is threatened by the extreme power of multinational corporations that manipulate governments with legal and illegal methods.

They are of course wealthier than many states, and the record of the tobacco industry and the drug companies does not instil much confidence in me that this evil will easily be remedied.

Medina does not find a great deal of hope in our political system to rescue us from the perils of such abuses (pages 301-02):

Cornell West, Harvard professor and author of the book RaceMatters, emphasises that it is necessary to go beyond the narrow confines of the liberal-versus-conservative debate regarding issues of race and class. He asserts that liberals, on the one hand, generally focus their attention on reforming economic and political structures but do not like to talk about individual morality, responsibility, individual spiritual transformation, and traditional religious or spiritual values. On the other hand, conservatives like to focus on individual morality and responsibility (the Protestant ethic) but generally avoid tackling the issues of business morality and ethics, corporate responsibility, and socio-economic justice and equality.

. . . It may seem as if liberals and conservatives have totally different views, but in actuality, from a holistic perspective, their views are simply opposite sides of the same Cartesian-Newtonian coin.

Those who look to mainstream religion for redemption may be in for a bit of a shock (page 391):

The most obvious result of the materialistic paradigm is the rampant consumerism that pervades Western culture.

. . . . Disturbing evidence shows that consumerism has made strong inroads even among spiritual and religious people. In fact, [when] compared to the general population, Americans who report to have a strong spiritual or religious faith show almost no difference in their adherence to crass materialism – they expend their money, time, personal energy, and other resources in much the same ways as all other Americans.

It is clear that Medina feels we will have to look elsewhere for a solution and this blog contains a wealth of information on those possibilities. As I said at the very beginning of this sequence I will not be unpacking all that in detail now (see below for some good starting points).

When I return once more to a consideration of his work, I will look first at the price our children are paying for our attachment to this bankrupt creed. It is perhaps worth sharing well in advance of the posts themselves a diagram which attempts to show one way in which we create a vicious circle by our attachment to and credulous belief in reductionist materialism and the benefits of competitive capitalism.